1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the class of compositions known as "paint spray booth compositions". More particularly, the invention relates to a composition for circulating in a system for trapping and removing paint from a paint spray booth.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art has seen a wide variety of apparatus, methods and compositions for attempting to solve the problem of removing paint from paint spray booths and the like. These attempts have included the following. Electrostatic precipitators in a moving air stream have been employed to try to effect a removal of the droplets of the dried paint. These have not been totally successful because of the inadequate drying of the paint, the agglomeration, and the resulting mess. The use of background boards has been tried to allow paint build up thereon. This has not been successful when attempting to spray bulky objects or the like. In the recent past there has been developed the use of vertically oriented surfaces that are wet by a fluid flowing thereover, the fluid serving to entrap the paint droplets to remove them from the paint spray booth. These types of apparatuses have usually been of two general types. In one the pump sucks in the fluid and circulates and sprays it in a curtain, over a waterfall, or the like without conditioning. In this kind of apparatus, the droplets of paint plug the spray nozzles, foul the pump and otherwise render costly repairs necessary repeatedly. In the pumpless type, the supernatant liquid is sucked from over a sludge and flowed over vertical surfaces to form a film of the composition. The sludge has become semi-solid, bonded to the storage container or failed to settle and fouled the circulation means. Clean up became troublesome. A wide variety of hydrophilic and hydrophobic compositions have been tried but have not been successful in resolving the problem. Moreover, these compositions have required daily metering of new composition into the system with costly removal of the sludge, as by filtration, or large quiescent storage vats or the like on a daily basis. Thus, inordinate amounts of time have to be spent treating the composition and the system.
From the foregoing it can be seen that the prior art has not found a satisfactory solution to the problem of removing paint from a paint spray booth; particularly, employing a composition for trapping and removing the paint.